Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government is taking to increase the number of occupational health practitioners.

The Government’s November 2017 Command Paper ‘Improving lives: the future of work, health and disability’ set out a vision for the reform of occupational health and recognised the critical role of occupational health and other related professions in delivering this.

In line with the commitments in the Command Paper, an Occupational Health Expert Group was appointed to support work in this area. This has included looking at the occupational health workforce to ensure sufficient expert capacity is available in the future. Health Education England, through its National School of Occupational Health, has also been involved in this work.

Ministers have announced their intention to consult on measures to improve access to high quality occupational health later this year.